Regarding Shelley at Upstairs At The Gatehouse

Celebrated today for his groundbreaking romantic poetry and acclaimed intellect, in 1812 Percy Shelley was seen as a dangerous radical by the establishment. Expelled from Oxford for his atheism he then scandalously eloped with Harriet Westbrook and the two of them went to Dublin to campaign for Irish independence.

The play opens with Shelley fleeing Ireland with his young wife, his support for the failed rebellion making him a marked man. Their notoriety has led to constant surveillance by order of the Home Secretary and we meet them in North Devon trying to rebuild their lives and their political ambitions. 

Playwright Richard Bradbury explores the impact of political surveillance on relationships and what we can learn from the past now that we live in a world where we are constantly watched and recorded. Linking the past and present is an ever present theme in his work. Commissioned by the GLA for their commemoration of the two hundred year anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade his play ‘Become a Man’ about escaped slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass (London City Hall and the Hackney Empire) explored our contemporary response to slavery in the context of it’s history.